


Later is not Enough

by waterbird13



Series: Tumblr Fics [93]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Eating Disorder, F/M, Food, Mental Illness, Self Harm, Stanford Era, angsty, eating disorder as self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7691125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbird13/pseuds/waterbird13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam hasn't earned the right to eat yet. He's not even close. </p><p>Jess just wants him to have dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Later is not Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is another piece from Tumblr.
> 
> Warnings: Stanford era, Sam/Jess. Sam has an eating disorder which he uses to self harm/punish himself. This is angsty and unresolved.

“Sam, you need to eat,” Jess says pleadingly.

Sam looks up. “Later,” he says, and then tries to turn back to his notes.

“Sam. You always say that and then you never eat. C'mon. I made pasta.”

Sam grits his teeth. He doesn’t want to snap at her, knows full well she doesn’t deserve anything like that. Then again, maybe then she’d snap back, and he would definitely deserve that.

It’s not worth it though. Not if it hurts her.

“Later,” he repeats. “I’m busy.”

“You’ve been studying those notes for six hours,” she says, clearly frustrated with him. Sam wonders if she’s going to yell anyways. “Take a break.”

“I can’t,” he says, flipping the page. He failed last week’s pop quiz. Unprepared, a waste of the professor’s time. A waste of an education, he thinks. He has to prove his worth. Prove he belongs here. Prove he deserves what’s been given to him.

He definitely hasn’t earned a break for food yet. Maybe not tonight at all. He hasn’t done anything worthwhile, hasn’t proven that he can handle his class.

“Sam,” Jess says, voice getting firm. “Food is not optional. You need it. You’ll study better when you have it. That’s…you know that.”

Sam knows this, knows how food and energy and consumption works, but it’s like it goes in one ear and out the other, his brain unable to process the idea when it’s so set on punishing itself.

“I’m bringing you a bowl,” she seems to decide. “If you’re freaking out, that’s fine, but you can eat at the same time. You need food, Sam.”

Sam just nods absently, placatingly, and gets back to work, reaching for his textbook. He gets through a few pages when Jess plops a bowl of pasta in front of him. “Eat,” she instructs. She looks uncertain, then leans in and kisses his temple. “Please, Sam. For me.”

Not even for her, Sam soon learns. He hasn’t earned the right to eat because he can’t prove he can keep up in school, because he hasn’t done enough to remedy that fact. Not even for her can he ignore that.

When she comes back to check on him an hour later, she looks decidedly unimpressed. “When you come up from…from this studying binge, we’re talking about this,” she says, and it sounds a bit like a threat.

Sam just nods, accepting that she’s mad. “Later,” he promises.

He falls asleep over his book that night, pasta cold and uneaten by his head, determined to wake up early and start the process over again.


End file.
